Why the Best Tech Leaders Get Their Hands Dirty
TechTarget, Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
Tech leaders must gain hands-on experience with emerging technologies to credibly guide organizations through constant change.
Johnny Halife, CTO at Southworks, argues that curiosity matters more than expertise in technology leadership. Leaders must actively work with new tools and platforms rather than simply reading about them, and he cites his early hands-on experience with Azure before documentation existed.
This approach builds institutional knowledge and shared operational vocabulary across teams navigating multiple technology transitions.
Halife stresses that leaders erode trust when they manage change messaging without experiencing it themselves, and that a hands-on posture is especially critical during AI adoption.